This invention relates in general to a pivot assembly for the attachment of a bail to an article and to tooling for its manufacture, and more particularly to a pivot assembly and a mold therefor enabling simpler and more economical fabrication of the pivot assembly.
Pails, such as for example are used in the paint industry and the like, are usually provided with a bail pivotally secured to the pail by a pair of posts or ears attached to opposite sides of the pail. Typically, the posts are in the form of short, hollow cylinders, secured with their axes radial to the axis of the pail, each post having a small central opening distal from the pail wall. The bail is typically fabricated from a section of stiff wire, bent into arcuate form, with each end bent further to provide a hook-like termination which may be captivated in the opening in a post.
A common prior art method of assembly of such pails attaches to the walls of the pail body, as by welding, separately fabricated posts. Such an approach suffers from the need to separately fabricate the posts and pail body and subsequently attach one to the other. Clearly, manufacturing a number of diverse items and subsequently assembling them complicates the manufacturing operation, and is likely to have a significant impact on the cost of the end item.
An alternative method of manufacture known in the prior art is to fabricate both pail body and bail-holding posts as a unitary item, as for instance by molding. However, as the posts are shaped with a reentrant portion normal to the axis of the pail body, this method of manufacture generally requires multi-cored dies, the various parts of which must be withdrawn from the molded item in a fixed sequence. It will be understood that such a complex mold may unfavorably impact the cost of tooling.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a container with a pivot-post structure which may be molded as a unit with the container to which it is attached and which, while providing a reentrant aperture suitable for captivating the end of a wire bail, may be fabricated by a two-part mold which may be simply assembled and dissassembled.
Another object is to provide a mold for making a container with a pivot post structure embodying the present invention.